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Cake lawsuit wastes more public money

As for a man-couple filing a discrimination lawsuit against a north-central Colorado baker, let them eat cake – one of their own making, or one baked in the ever-more-bold rainbow community.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it will hear an appeal from Charlie Craig and David Mullins, who sued cake-maker Jack Phillips and his Masterpiece Cakeshop of Lakewood, Colo. During the summer of 2012, Phillips refused to bake a wedding cake for Craig and Mullins, citing his objection to same-sex marriage on religious grounds. The Craig-Mullins lawsuit went up the legal ladder from there.

The liberal Colorado Court of Appeals eventually affirmed a state Civil Rights Commission decision from May 2014. That decision ordered Phillips and his employees to create cakes that celebrate same-sex ceremonies and required Phillips to comply with Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act by re-educating his staff (which includes members of his own family) and filing quarterly “compliance” reports for two years.

Even though Phillips has lost every legal skirmish so far, he has not given up. Hence, his appeal to the highest court in the land.

“I’ll sell anyone any cake I’ve got,” he wrote last year in a letter to The Denver Post. “But I won’t design a cake that promotes something that conflicts with the Bible’s teachings. And that rule applies to far more than cakes celebrating same-sex marriages. I also won’t use my talents to celebrate Halloween, anti-American or anti-family themes, atheism, racism, or indecency.”

Phillips might have avoided the initial lawsuit and the resulting fallout it has generated if he had simply told the two roosters that his bakery had run out of flour and would not be getting resupplied in time to bake the desired cake.

All joking aside, the plaintiffs’ every litigated step along the way appears to have violated Phillips’ First Amendment rights and his prerogative to operate his business as he sees fit in a free-market republic. Once again, spineless “political correctness” has overwhelmed reasonable good sense, good government and good behavior in a Jeffersonian democracy.

Meanwhile, the Craig-Mullins demand to be treated equally under the law easily could have been satisfied if they had just found another store that would have baked their cake. They might have found a sympathetic baker in the Cap Hill area of Denver. After all, the Mile High city — a mere 8 miles away by car from Lakewood — is reputed to be home to the seventh-largest LGBT population in the nation.

Instead, the unhappy “couple” retained a lawyer and wound up costing the U.S. taxpayer a bundle of time and money in the court system because of a frivolous lawsuit.

Hopefully the high court in Washington will reach a swift decision. Hopefully, in reaching their decision, our supreme justices will not try to overstep the authority of the High Court in the Hereafter.